Tiger Woods among subjects of new planning commissioner's photos

He has captured closeups, telling and perhaps some of the most exhilarating moments in the lives of sports figures.

From Lakers games to the Olympics to golf tours, Gary Newkirk has been most comfortable behind a camera lens.

He watched his father develop pictures in a darkroom. He fixed his first "real" camera – a 35 mm half frame Cannon – when he was about 10. He shot pictures of race cars hanging out with his brother at tracks.

And just like that, toying and tinkering with cameras, Newkirk fell in love with photography a long time ago.

"When I am shooting, the camera is part of me, an extension of me," says Newkirk, who at 54 is Dana Point's newest planning commissioner, picked to serve on the panel last month by the City Council.

He graduated with a degree in economics from UCLA but the lure of the camera got the then stockbroker fresh out of college to chuck that line of work for a gig in 1984 with a Belgian magazine shooting motorbike racing.

He would go on to make a career out of professional sports photography, at one time doing 35 golf tours per year, thriving on the competition with his peers and the close proximity the lens put him to icons like Tiger Woods.

About a dozen years ago, Newkirk moved with his wife of 20 years, Kathy, to Dana Point, which was one of the points south that he surfed the long board with pals while growing up in Anaheim.

Here he slowed down a bit from the grind of photography after his son Nick was born, so that he could have more family time.

Newkirk will serve through March 31, 2011, the remaining term of former Commissioner Michael Dec, who resigned during the summer.

We recently caught up with Newkirk as he was en route to the San Diego Zoo for an outing with Nick.

Q. What got you interested in photography?

A. it's something that I've always kind of played with. My dad had a darkroom at home. (Lyle Newkirk was in the auto finance business and did photography as a hobby)

Q. How important is photography to you?

A. It's something that's extremely important. It's a big part of who I am, a visually oriented person. (The only formal training the self-taught Newkirk had was with late photographer Oliver Gagliani, who he says was his closest link to the first generation of iconic photographers like Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Minor White.)

Q. What does photography do for you?

A. It depends on where I am shooting. It would be a way of getting a little closer, a little more intimate to where you are (with nature, while backpacking). When you're shooting sports, it's kind of a window into the soul of the athlete a little bit. A side of that also is competitiveness. It kind of gives you that drive to have a better tournament than your peers.

Q. Do you see picture angles in everything?

A. It's really more what Oliver Gagliani said, "You don't go out and take pictures, you just go out and the pictures find you."

Q. What was your most memorable shot? Why?

A. Boy, that's a tough question. I guess I'd have to probably say, Tiger's winning putt in the first major he won, which is the Master's. It wasn't the best. The light was going, the sun was going down. It was a great reaction but a reaction he does a lot. It was really the moment. His whole progression, to see him win the masters at the age he did it, for the sport in general it was huge. (Newkirk's shot ran on the cover of Golf World magazine; see slideshow at http://www.golfdigest.com/golfworld/special/masters/2008/photos_97masters)

Q. What brought you to Dana Point?

A. We just wanted to move to south Orange County. I've surfed my whole life (and) always really liked Dana Point and South County. I learned to surf in Huntington and Newport; when we had money for gas we'd head south, occasionally to San Diego, more often to Salt Creek and Trestles area.

(Newkirk spent a lot of time in the water this summer with his son. The father and son's goal was to catch and ride the same wave.) It all clicked for Nick just before school. Watching him ride the waves was just so much fun; it brought back a lot of memories of when I was learning.

Q. Why the Planning Commission?

A. I was involved with the city's Residential Building Heights Taskforce, in place for six to eight months, and at the time there were a lot of properties under development that the codes didn't address. There were a lot of variances because of the shapes of lots. (The taskforce) crafted some changes in the codes and accommodated more of the challenging lots.

Kind of through the process I realized the importance of the Planning Commission and really a need for a quality group of people who look at these things.

I think it's important to have individuals that really care about the community that get involved.